I,m assumng your talking about flatbed scanners as drum scanners are a lot dearer, but the quality is excellent.One good thing about fb scanners is you can scan objects
though the depth of field/focus is very limited.I use a canon 8000f [2 years old now],
flatbed scanner and it gives very good results.It was around $600.00 then.
Try Epson or Canon,as you know,you only get what you pay for.

Take a look. It is not something that you'd buy as you buy a new strap for your camera, of course, but still it is not so expensive as to forget completely about it... on the contrary, I'd say it's really cheap!

having one at home you could save a lot of money: you just have your negatives -or slides- developed (no prints), and do the rest yourself. I don't see how you cannot think about having one for personal use, Brett. I myself am thinking on getting one!

A flatbed is something I wouldn't recommend for photography. I have one, maybe not good enough, ok, but still I think it is a kind of middle position between having a drum scanner and not having anything. A middle position that maybe you can afford, right, but I wouldn't go for it (I did not get mine for photo!). Either you do it or not, but if you're going to do it, do it well. Do something that is worth doing